Fels entered during the explanation.
No one heard the door.
One moment the black-robed mage wasn't there, and the next he stood near the entrance, quiet enough that Welf nearly dropped his charcoal.
"Then you're right to doubt them," Fels said. "Knossos holds mechanisms old enough that even their broken pieces can produce strange effects. Daedalus did not think the way ordinary builders do."
Rayleigh looked at him. "You have records?"
"Fragments." Fels drifted closer to the table. "Ouranos has allowed me to share more, now that you've confirmed an active route. Many suspected passages were sealed after the Great Feud, but a seal placed from outside can only hold back what we understand. The true doors answer to Daedalus's bloodline and a particular key. Without one or the other, the Guild can only block, watch, and guess."
"The Daedalus Orb," Rayleigh said.
Finn's eyes moved to him.
Fels turned slightly too. "You know the name?"
Rayleigh's expression didn't change. "I know a lot of inconvenient names. I don't have the key, if that's the next question."
Fels was quiet for a few seconds, then let it go. "The Orb opens certain sealed doors and traces routes ordinary maps can't follow. If a remnant group has one, they can move through Knossos far more freely than we can."
Eina went pale. "Do we know whether any surviving Daedalus descendants are missing?"
"That's being checked," Fels said.
'Which meant they did not know.'
Tsubaki clicked her tongue. "A creepy tunnel, a wall-tapping scarecrow, stolen voices — and maybe someone holding the master key."
Welf had gone quiet again, but this time his eyes were on the sketches, and Rayleigh could see him working the problem through in metal and channels — what kind of tool could survive a place that listened.
He let the boy think.
Finn tapped a finger on the map. "If they have the Orb, chasing them through unknown passages hands them every advantage. We deny routes instead of following blind."
Riveria nodded. "Seal the confirmed openings, push their movement toward exits we control, and use the survivors' route records to predict where they may surface."
"That takes time," Alise said, frustrated.
"It does," Finn answered. "But if we rush in and vanish, the next rescue team has it that much harder."
Alise didn't like the answer, but she respected it. "Then give me work that actually helps!"
Finn turned the map toward her. "Astraea Familia knows the old Evilus sites better than most. Mark every place where a hidden exit was suspected but never confirmed. Missing witnesses, strange collapses, routes that never matched the reports."
Alise leaned over the map at once, the anger turning into something to do with her hands. "Kaguya — you remember the warehouse near the seventh block?"
"The one with the fake wine cellar," Kaguya said.
"That one. Mark it."
Ryuu moved in beside them, quiet but sharp-eyed. "There was the abandoned shrine near the east canal, too. We never found the escape route, but the smell of wet stone stayed after the fight."
Eina hurried to fetch a clean copy of the city map.
The support room shifted again, this time into a rough command post.
Finn and Riveria worked off the confirmed route.
Alise, Kaguya, and Ryuu added memories from the Great Feud — not as a tidy history lesson, but as old scars pointed in directions.
Rayleigh ended up standing between the maps and the workbench, turning one side into the other.
A hidden exit near a collapsed warehouse meant they needed markers that could bite into brick as well as Dungeon stone.
A possible route under a canal meant waterproof seals.
And if the passage listened, then the life-check charms needed a silent signal instead of warmth alone — because touching a charm and saying it's warm inside the tunnel was exactly the kind of habit the route would steal.
Welf caught that last problem first.
"What if the charm changes weight?" he said suddenly.
Rayleigh looked over. "Weight?"
"Not a lot. Just enough for whoever's holding it to feel the difference. Warmth's easy to miss — gloves, blood on your hands, whatever. But if it gets heavier when there's life nearby, nobody has to say a word."
Tsubaki's eye lit up. "That's good."
"Can you make it do that?" Welf asked, ignoring her.
Rayleigh picked up one of the unfinished tags. "Maybe. A small pull toward the living presence instead of a plain warmth response. It would tug in the person's direction, but only within short range."
Finn's attention sharpened at once. "That would improve rescue speed."
"It also makes false positives more dangerous, if the route learns to mimic it," Rayleigh said. "Still useful. But no single signal becomes the truth."
"Trust nothing alone," Kaguya said from the map table. "I'm starting to like this operation's philosophy."
Fels looked at the tag in Rayleigh's hand. "Can you finish enough before the next operation?"
Rayleigh looked at Welf.
Welf looked at Tsubaki.
Tsubaki looked at the furnace as if already counting how much sleep she could afford to lose.
Hephaestus, who had come in quietly during the map work, answered before any of them could make a stupid promise.
"They can finish a small batch after proper rest."
"Hephaestus," Rayleigh said, "your definition of support has gotten very restrictive."
"My definition of support includes not letting my children collapse on the floor because they tried to outwork a cursed tunnel."
Tsubaki started to lift a hand.
"You'll sleep before sunrise," Hephaestus said, before she could speak.
Tsubaki lowered the hand. "Understood."
Welf stared at the goddess, then at Tsubaki, plainly shaken by how fast the captain had folded.
Rayleigh decided that lesson could teach itself, and went back to the charm.
...
By the time the room finally went quiet, the city outside had sunk deep into night.
Karz slept under Airmid's watch.
Lott had been told only that his friend was alive, and according to the healer who carried the message, he'd cried himself into exhaustion without setting off another backlash.
The two of them would be brought together slowly, with Airmid present and everyone else well out of the way.
Rayleigh carried the sealed tray of black-red cord scraps into a smaller side room for one last check before leaving.
Fels followed him.
The black-robed mage said nothing at first, only watched as Rayleigh set one cord under a clear glass cover and drew a small isolation circle around it.
The cord looked dead. It didn't move, twitch, or breathe.
Even so, Rayleigh trusted it about as far as he trusted gods who claimed to be 'just watching.'
After a minute, Fels spoke. "You knew the name of the Orb."
Rayleigh didn't look up. "I did."
"From where?"
"Is this curiosity, suspicion, or Ouranos asking through you?"
"All three."
Rayleigh tapped the glass cover lightly. "I know fragments of a lot of things. Some from dreams, some from patterns, some from the same place that tells me what kind of soul a blade should carry. Explaining the whole source would take too long and sound less believable than the short version."
"And the short version?"
"I know the name. I don't know where the Orb is now, and I can't open a Knossos door without it."
Fels seemed to accept about half of that, which was fair.
Rayleigh wouldn't have believed himself all the way either.
"Then answer this," Fels said. "The figure you saw. Did it have a soul?"
Rayleigh finally looked up. "With the charm I made? No reaction. With my own senses, from that distance and inside that passage — I can't be sure. It felt empty. But the tunnel itself interferes with perception."
"Could it have been a creature without a soul?"
"In this city? I wouldn't go as far as impossible."
Fels lowered his hood slightly, though the dark beneath stayed unreadable.
"Daedalus's later descendants experimented with more than architecture. Some tried to build guardians for Knossos. Some used monsters. A few — if the old reports can be trusted — used people."
Rayleigh's expression cooled.
Fels went on, his voice dry and heavy. "Many records were destroyed. Many witnesses died. The Guild buried what was left because the city needed peace after the Great Feud. That peace may be charging interest now."
Rayleigh looked back at the cord, still and ugly under the glass.
"Then we collect the debt from whoever's still around to pay it."
Fels made a faint rasping sound that might have been amusement. "Hephaestus was right. You should sleep."
"Everyone keeps telling me that today."
"Perhaps because you don't listen when only one person says it."
Rayleigh had no answer to that.
As Fels turned to leave, the cord inside the isolation circle shifted.
It was tiny — barely enough to count as movement. A small curl at the end, like a finger bending in sleep.
Rayleigh's hand went to Benihime.
Fels stopped at the door.
The cord tapped the glass once.
Then again.
Two soft clicks.
A pause.
Three more.
Rayleigh stared at it, and every trace of tiredness drained out of him.
Fels's voice came low from the doorway. "A signal?"
Rayleigh leaned closer, careful not to touch the glass.
The cord tapped again — and this time the rhythm matched the one Karz had described. The thing in the tunnel had tapped the wall, and the corridor had answered.
Rayleigh smiled slowly, and there was nothing warm in it.
"No," he said. "An invitation."